Re-exploring the U-verse

In mid-2007, I tested and reviewed U-verse, AT&T’s television service that competes with cable and satellite. In a series of blogposts and a column review, I said U-verse was too buggy for my tastes. It had just been introduced to the Houston market, and it showed.

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of e-mail from people who want to know if it’s gotten better. As time has gone on, it’s to the point that I’m asked about it at least once a week, and most of those queries are from Comcast users who are desperate for an alternative.

As a result, I decided to give U-verse another test drive. On Friday, installers returned to my swankienda to hook me up yet again. Rather than the seven hours required for the first installation — largely because U-verse’s synchronization servers were down, and my house didn’t require any rewiring — this time it took less than two.

In addition to testing the TV service, I’m also trying out the Internet access, which I didn’t sample last year. AT&T set me up with the maximum speed available through U-verse — 10 Mbps downloads and 1.5 Mbps up. That is faster than the company’s standard DSL, which maxes out at 6 Mbps.

(In fact, my house is far enough away from a central office that I can’t get 6 Mbps standard DSL — 3 Mbps is the best I can do. But with U-verse — which uses a different circuit that brings fiber optics into my neighborhood, but not directly to my house — I am able to go beyond the 6 Mbps limit. Yay!)

I didn’t have a chance to play with U-verse as much as I’d like over the weekend, but here are some initial impressions:

• I’d complained last year that, while the picture quality was excellent on my analog, 32-inch CRT television, I noticed a lot of digital artifacts. There was a lot of "smearing" during scenes that included fast action, and the picture often pixilated. So far, I haven’t seen any of that. The picture is flawless.

• Video on demand selection seems improved. Last year, I used U-verse’s VoD system to watch Dexter, Showtime’s hot series about a serial killer working for the Miami Police Department. I complained that not all the Season 1 episodes were available, even though the first season had completed. This time around, Season 2 is available in its entirety. A cursory swing through Showtime’s and HBO’s on-demand offerings shows series in general are more complete than last year.

• While the DVR still lacks some of the better features of TiVo, its performance has improved noticeably. Changing channels is almost instantaneous, and its menus are much more responsive than last year. My favorite feature remains the ability to get a thumbnail preview of what’s on other channels while you continue to watch the one you’re on.

• The Internet access is remarkably fast. U-verse uses an 802.11g wireless router made by 2Wire, and its connection is solid and reliable. To test download speeds, I grabbed a copy of the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system, and it downloaded the nearly 800-MB file at 1.1 megabytes a second. By contrast, Comcast approaches 1 MBps during its initial PowerBoost phase, then settles back to about 600 KBps for most of the download.

• U-verse has added some new features, including the ability to stream photos from Flickr to your TV; the ability to play simple games, such as Solitaire and Mah-Jongg; and stock and news tickers. I’ve only sampled these, and so far they’re fairly rudimentary.

I’ve got U-verse service for about two weeks. If I like it and the package I want is competitively priced with Comcast, I might become a customer.

Keeping in mind that I don’t have an HDTV, what would you like to know about U-verse? Leave your question as a comment, and I’ll try to answer it in a future blog post or my column.

Update: This evening, hoping to follow the continuing adventures of Dexter, I found that Showtime On Demand suddenly was not available on the list of U-verse’s VoD selections. After a reboot of the DVR failed to fix the problem, I decided this was a chance to check out U-verse’s tech support.

I waited on hold less than five minutes, described the problem briefly to a technician, who then put me on hold for another two minutes. When he came back he said that Showtime had taken its on-demand service down for maintenance. He had no estimated time for its return, but suggested I try back later in the evening.

I checked again about a half-hour later, and sure enough, it was back. I wish, rather than the selection simply vanish from the selection menu, that a "Down for Maintenance" message had appeared. But still, calling for tech support was relatively painless.